A Little Neanderthal Work-in-Progress

Draus-Barini, J. et al. 2013. Bona fide colour: DNA prediction of human eye and hair colour from ancient and contemporary skeletal remains. Investigative Genetics 4:3.

Chaitanya, L. et al. 2018. The HIrisPlex-S system for eye, hair and skin colour prediction from DNA:
Introduction and forensic developmental validation. Forensic Science International: Genetics 35, 123-135.

Walsh, S. et al. 2017. Global skin colour prediction from DNA. Human Genetics 136, 847-863.

CORRECTION:

MrMacStylee points out that in addition to SNPs (which I was calling 'variants' as shorthand), there are also Single-Nucleotide Variants (SNVs). Hopefully this did not lead to any confusion :)

[sayakchakraborty]

Being a palaeoanthropologist, I can safely say that whatever you've said is absolutely correct and you briefly have covered hours of lecture on Neanderthal morphology. Kudos! And your reconstruction is quite accurate. This would be a classical western Neanderthal.

[fjlkagudpgo]

oh my god what *else* is this lad capable of

[kingarthurthethirdthst]

Simon in 2022: "I'm not a medical professional and I tried not to delve to deeply in biological research, however, I do believe I found a cure for cancer"

[Kamarovsky_KCM]

Please don't be so hard on yourself Simon! You're a wonderful and skilled creator. Your videos always bring enjoyment to your viewers, as well as provide us with so much information!

[sinister-]

The further you went in, the more it looked like me.
Thank you .

[mikejurassic]

Great - There are still Polymaths in the world - cheers

[nicholasrake]

This was a fantastic change of pace! Your passion for learning and sharing is quite commendable. I'm deeply impressed by your attention to detail both when presenting facts and painting a portrait. Thank you for sharing!

[cdrouillard]

Adding to his long list of career prospects is illustrating for archaeological textbooks and other reference materials :)

[GoodmansGhost]

"The process of watching it be done might ruin it" Tell that to every art fan that loves watching these kinds of videos. Nothing wrong with showing the finished results at the start though.

[meadish]

Your content is always fascinating. I'd love to just sit and chat about languages and just about everything under the sun with you over whatever beverage you prefer. This was a great watch.

[paradoxicalocus]

I had no idea you were such a brilliant artist! Really enjoyed watching you put this piece together

[Snaut]

You're quite a talented artist. I'm looking forward to the finished piece, I bet you'll really bring her to life.

[anniesearle]

There is one hairstyle that we know that Neanderthals had the ability to produce. Hardy et al. 2020 found a preserved example of Neanderthal cord, which had both an s and a z twist, meaning the strands were first twisted one way (left to right) and then twisted together the other (right over left). This is the same technique used in aptly named rope braids. Whether they actually wore these is another thing entirely, but they could definitely make them!

[stephenmurray]

Mr Roger, this isn't a specific comment on this video, but I wished to say I appreciate your content. I found you via Dr Jackson Crawford, but I was so pleased to find someone such as yourself, a relatable person who clearly is interesteded in language. I apologise for my poor wording. I'm only just getting better.

[torbjornkallstrom]

This was very interesting :) I figure I might as well give you some painting advice. In Photoshop you can go to image-adjustments-levels and edit your sketch so that the brightest parts of it are completely white. Then you can just put the sketch layer on top of your painting layers and set it to "multiply". This way you get your sketch overlayed on top of your painting. You could also have started out with a much bigger brush when you blocked in the colors. This would speed up the process and also make the paint look less "finnicky". The rule of thumb is to always work big to small.

I was surprised to see a painting video on this channel. But I like how it turned out :)

[cargumdeu]

Phwooar!! What a stunner! Its no wonder with darlings like this there was some admixture between our early hunter gatherer ancestors and Neanderthals. I wonder what his mum said when he brought her home?

[tobiasfunke]

I would love to see more of this type of content from you!

[Addonexus]

Simon, you strike me as a man who is just very good at learning.

[glitchxero]

Looks great! Way better than I would've done. Love the video as always.

[lagomoof]

Imagine if Simon has, purely by accident, hit upon a reasonable representation of one of the European ancestors whose Neanderthal DNA is still present among modern humans. He might have depicted one of his own direct ancestors. (And a common ancestor of many people of European descent here.)